Behind the Bastards - Part Three: The Finders: CIA Child Trafficking Cult or Just Normal Cult?

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Were The Finders a CIA operation? The short answer is "maybe"! The long answer is... this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Nicole Perkins and in my new podcast, The Godmother, I'm inviting you to 1930s New York. I want to tell you the extraordinary story of Eunice Carter, the trailblazing black female lawyer who put New York's most notorious gangsters behind bars. Somehow, she's been largely forgotten. Listen to The Godmother with me, Nicole Perkins, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Reed Isbell. And Dan Isbell. Otherwise known as the Brothers Hunt.

We're hosting a new podcast, God's Country, by Meteater and iHeart Podcasts. God's Country is a weekly drive to the intersection of music and the outdoors. Two things that go together like Sunday and some pond fishing. Our cows and green pastures. This record will be the one that will always define who I am. So hop on in and ride shotgun with us. We take the back roads with some of the most influential

people in country music today. Listen to God's Country on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We're f***ed by the newbie. Hi, I'm Chris Turni, and if you're like me, it's easy to read all the bad news about the climate and just think we're f***ed. That's why I've started a new podcast. It's a show about the climate crisis and what we can do about it. So stop doom-scrolling and tune in to Un***ing the Future. Together we can un*** things. Listen to Un***ing the Future on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Calls on Media November 4th, 2009, a Wednesday, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Oh my god. At a 7-Eleven store, four bodies are found by police just a little before midnight Where was Jamie Loftus during this horrible crime? That is the question we're going to answer today on this episode of behind the bastards. I'm Robert Evans I was in high school. I was in high school And we didn't all watch serial and learned that high schoolers can murder.

Jamie. I think that we should just clear the air at the beginning of the episode. I don't want to, you know, I feel like I owe the audience an explanation. I've seen the allegations going around. Many of them AI generated saying things like, basically all of them AI generated saying things like, quote, Basically all of them AI generated.

quote, according to an episode of the podcast, The Finders. Jamie Loftus is involved in murders in Grand Rapids, Michigan, unquote. God, AI really has made it easier to be to be the kind of piece of shit that I am. And for that reason, I'm excited for the future. How bad could it be? Hopefully, I live to part four. Look, my alibi is in early 2009, or in November, on November 4, 2009, I was coming off of the rousing success of my Sarah Palin Halloween costume. So I could have possibly been in Grand Rapids. I was in Brockton celebrating my hilarious costume.

And I have like, when Obama got elected the first time, I had just tried birth control for the first time cause I like aspirationally thought that I might have sex at some point. And I threw up during the inauguration. It seems like a statement. It wasn't. I was just sick.

Well, we've all gotten a fun lesson. Such a turn. A fun lesson about how AI works and how easy it is if you have a successful podcast to convince the internet that your friend committed a series of murders. The first result on Google is now Jamie Laftis Grand Rapids. It worked. The episode came out five hours ago.

We are recording this the day it dropped. And I'm a full on murderer already. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I have, like, you can consult my alibis. Uh-huh. And, uh, and I, you know, I always had a feeling that podcasting would ruin my life.

Yeah. Yeah. And this has given me an idea. Folks, friends at home, every week, just send me money. And whoever sends me the most money can also send in the name of a friend they want framed for murder. And I'll do it, you know? There don't appear to be consequences for this. No, not yet.

Yeah. I do kind of wish mine was Grand Rapids. Mine is just the variety of my name multiple times with age. Sophie Ray Lichterman. Age. Sophie Ray Lichterman. Age. Sophie Ray Lichterman. Age. That's unsettling because it is age.

Because it was an awful lot of people are trying to find out how old you are and there's really no good reason they'd be doing that. Fuck you all, I'm ageless. Fuck you. I love those ones that are like, I like the ones where they speculate about whether you're married and how much money you have and how tall you are because it's always wrong. Like writer like Jamie has five million dollars. She's four foot 10 and still a virgin.

You're like, fuck yeah. I wish brother that would be great. Well, Jamie, speaking of short versions, I don't think there are any short versions in this series, because as we discussed in our previous episodes, this guy had a lot of sex, or at least wanted interviewers in 1996 to believe that. Impossible to say which the case was. I mean, we wanted people to believe a lot of things in 1996 to believe that. Impossible to say which the case was. We wanted people to believe a lot of things in 1996.

This is on the the the less offensive end of it, unfortunately. I will say someone on the subreddit claims that their grandma said that, yeah, people got laid like crazy during World War Two. So, you know, there's my AI grade level of research into whether or not it was true that people were having wild ass sex during the war. Sorry, someone on the Reddit's grandma said that people fucked during World War II. Yeah, they were commenting on the podcast and were like, well, you know, based on what, to what Marion said about all the crazy World War II sex, my grandma said the same thing.

So that's, you know, two data points. We could print that in the New York Times now, if I'm understanding journalism correctly. So you're saying somebody was like grandma fucked and then you were like, great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess if they are a grandma, like they fucked. Right. Yeah, yeah.

You don't become a grandma. But you can't become a grandma, not you can't become a grandma not fucking. Well, I guess you could adopt anyways. Yeah, anyway. Let's, let's get back to the story. Virgin grandma, I would watch that movie. Back to the story. So yeah, when we left off our tale,

the story had blown up in the media. There were all sorts of people speculating that not only was the cult a bunch of Satanists, but they were trafficking children across the country. The police were kind of in love with hearing their own voices on Connie Chung and other major television shows. Everybody was having a good time, except for six children,

two arrested male cult members, and the mothers of those children, who were having much less of a good time, right? So the police started carrying out raids on finders' properties back up north because it involved the customs, or interstate commerce. The customs department wound up being the guys who actually like did a lot of the busts and stuff.

They're not really busts because they didn't find any evidence of gripes, but they went into the properties and ransacked them and took a bunch of shit away in bags, particularly found a ton of computers and advanced electronic equipment. This was the eighties. So we're talking like word processing machines and stuff, but they wrote about it like it was the KGB spying operation uncovered because this was the first computer anyone had ever seen. It's like it reminds me of, I mean, this was much later, but like when you go back and watch the first Fast and the Furious movie and you realize that the like electronics they're trafficking are just DVD players.

And you're just like, oh, okay. Yeah, people just didn't know what a computer was at this time. You would go to jail over DVD DVD players and you're just like, oh, okay. Yeah, people just didn't know what a computer was at this time. You would go to jail over DVD players. They didn't know what wasn't, wasn't impressive. Nowadays you can't throw away a DVD player. They won't let you. These days the computer will accuse you of murdering someone in Michigan. They've come a long way.

For sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, huge amounts of progress. I am imagining, because this is the 80s, and when I think about the wire, they're all still using typewriters. So I'm imagining at this point, the police are still, like, using the Flintstones bird that chisels onto a rock tablet. That's how all crimes get reported in the 80s.

So yeah, they make a big deal about the fact that they find a bunch of advanced electronic equipment read word processors and fax machines. Very suspicious. The only real piece of there's two pieces of like scary information. One of them, there's still no explanation. They found cages on the farm and claimed that the cages were for putting children in. I never heard that either refuted or addressed. I never saw any evidence as to why they thought that.

So maybe someone locked a kid up in a cage, but also it's only referenced once in a police report. And as we're going to cover everything in the police report was pretty much wrong. So one of the things stated is that a journey, and this comes from a journalist's article, but it's probably a journalist who was talking to a police officer that he said there were photos

of naked children in a bag that he saw through the plastic in a bag being carried out by the police. Now that sounds pretty bad, except for these people were never charged with child pornography. Authorities would later clarify that none was found. The photos were just normal pictures of little kids. I think one of two things happened. Either a cop lied to a journalist, common story,

or some parents had pictures of their kids where their kids weren't like fully clothed, like most parents wind up having, you know? It has a shirt off, it's summer, they're running around or whatever. Right. And that's what was going on. Right, there's like those strange cases of people being like charged with child pornography for pictures of themselves as a child and all that. I mean, I don't want to like, you know, it's so tricky talking about any of these cases and it should be,

but it is like, you know, if the police record is mostly wrong, it's also a very scary precedent if there is something to that allegation and they just simply stopped following up on it. Like that's also really bad. Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's worth investing again and it seems like this is probably a case. My guess is that somebody saw some like unclear,

because again, you're looking at through a trash bag, like a photo of a kid without their shirt on was like, oh my god, is that child porn? And it's like, no, is a kid running around a sprinkler in the summertime or whatever, like a parent took a picture of their child having fun in the summer. Right. That's my guess based on the fact that no charges of child pornography were ever filed. And police tend to file charges for that sort of thing.

They really do. They really do. And their track record is so bad. Did I ever tell you about the computer game I had to play in middle school where you have to save a child your age from being sex trafficked in Southern California. What? It is the way. It pops into my mind. It was called missing. And it was like, I played it in like

computer class. That can't have been a thing. I will send you the video. It was like this, you know, like, like choose your own adventure. That's very dark game where a kid meets a guy on a message board and is like sex trafficked and then is like complicit in crimes. Wait, I'm sending, I'm putting it in the chat right now. It's really bizarre. And the, the, the acting from the kid, Zack, he's like, hey, I'm Zack. I live in Toronto. My parents got divorced recently and I'm spending a lot of time on my computer. And then anyways, he gets missing.

And then you have to work with the cops to find Zack and get him away from his on his it says his online friendship with the villain whose name is Phantasma. Now, Jamie, yes, that doesn't sound like a thing you should be able to do. What play that game when you're 12, make children play that game, Jamie. That doesn't sound okay at all. So I agree with you. I don't know why, but it was like, it was like a three-part computer class

where it's like you play a math game for 20 minutes, you play a reading comprehension game for 20 minutes, and then you try to save Zach's life for 20 minutes, and then you have to go to the next class. At least the game has its priorities or something. I don't know. See, this really shows the difference in how dystopian things were when I was a kid

and when you were a kid, because when I was that age, we simply watched The Voyage of the Mimi, which starred very young child Ben Affleck. It had a huge jug of peanut butter on a boat. That's an accurate description of Voyage of the Mimi. A lot of naked men cuddling together, but not in a sex way.

It was a good show. I'm thrilled to report I have not seen it. Oh, great stuff. A lot of people online are psyched that I brought up the voyage of the Mimi. But speaking of voyages, these children are on a voyage into state custody because the police have apparently wrongly made claims

that they found cages and child pornography. One of the journalists who reported on the bust of the farm quoted customs officer Scott Hunt in an article he wrote. He quoted Hunt as saying, it is our belief that these kids were not kidnapped, but that their parents gave them away because one of the rights of the satanic organization is that you give up your rights to your children and the leaders of this organization can do what they want with your children. Now this was not based on anything, Jamie. No one had told Hunt this. He had not found evidence of this anywhere. This had not been claimed by anyone. This is just stuff that Hunt believed based on like Oprah's shows about the satanic panic that he'd watched. That's my stuff. I don't know where his info comes from,

but no one told it to him because none of this was real and the finders never claimed to be a satanic organization. It is truly stunning to me how many like just misinformation crusades were either like low-key begun by or really perpetuated by an episode of Oprah. Yeah, I don't know where else this would have come from. It's possible maybe that random anonymous parent who called the cops made this claim, but no one who had any knowledge of the group

made this claim, none of the kids made this claim. This is just something this cop told a reporter that helped ignite a moral panic, which is great. It's really good. And the reporter, what, just didn't fact check it? They're like, this sounds spicy. No. Why would you fact check a cop? You just print whatever they say. It's true. It is their paper, after all. Now, there was a small amount of physical evidence, by which I mean one rate of a finder's own home turned out a drawing of a pentagram.

So that's clear evidence of, and to be honest, I haven't seen this drawing. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody drew a star of David and one of the cops was like, pentagram, the devil, really no way to know. Given the quality of the police work going on here. There was also a bunch of flat stones in a backyard and something that is described as a tombstone

that may not have been. The police called this a ritual space. Former residents of the cold house were like, well, this was our garden. You know, we had like stones, like a walking path in the garden. Um, yeah. I don't know.

Uh, maybe it was a tombstone. I, I know of at least two friends who have tombstones, like, you know, fake ones in their garden. Like, I was about to talk, I was about to talk shit. And then I realized I'm like, I literally have one within like arms length. Yeah, exactly. I have a fake tombstone within arms reach. So it is a normal thing to have embarrassing.

That's a small amount of evidence to find in order to say they were trading their children for sex. Like that's not a lot to base that claim from. Right. It's so fucking infuriating hearing how poorly these investigations are done. Like it's okay. Yeah.

Oh, no, it is like blistering incompetence going on here. And it's about to get incompetenter, which is not a word. Oops, all incompetence. Yeah. What makes this especially fucked up is that the mothers of these kids tried as soon as they find out what's happened, right? Because, you know, the guys who get arrested get a call, they call the cult and like, Mary and Petty's secretary has to start getting up all the moms who were like, in different parts of the country or city, like playing various games that he's ordered them to play and be like, hey, your kids are in custody and we're suspected of trafficking them to Mexico.

Sorry about that. Just checking in. Just checking in. Fuck. So obviously being moms, they immediately call the police, right? And to try to be like, hey, we know these guys, our kids were with them with our permission,

nothing's going on here, please give us our children back. But, you know, Scott Hunt, that customs officer, I quoted from earlier, making those claims about Satanism, was really fucking incompetent. Scott Hunt, scunt is, well, no, okay. So- No, let's go with that.

I'm with you. Shall we? I'm with you. So because of the media circus around the case, they're not able to get through the phone lines to talk to him. And I'm going to quote from John Cohen's article describing what happens when the parents try to call the police and this reads like every parent's nightmare. When the mother's called Scott Hunt at the Tallahassee Police Department on Monday evening, they couldn't get through. Carolyn's on the phone saying she's Beebe's mother and she's met by snorts and giggles,

recalls Erica, that's one of the other mothers. She's the 200th caller claiming these beautiful children. They finally spoke to Tallahassee police, but Hunt still told the media they had yet to hear from the mothers. I'll never forgive him for that, says Erica. So first off, the cops laughed when the mothers called in at first because so many people were calling in falsely claiming to be the parents of those kids. And then when they finally did talk to the police, Hunt just didn't report that to the media.

He just continued saying their parents haven't gotten in touch because I guess that was made a better story for him to get on Connie Chung with. Like, I don't know why he would lie about that, but he did. So that's cool. Good stuff. Now, it's not just the cops and the press here. Petty is also to blame for a lot of this. He reacted to the whole very serious situation with more amusement than concern. Again, everything is kind of a game to this guy. And that's how he treats the fact that all of these women's children are now in custody. Right. Yeah, it is kind of, I mean, I guess it is very in keeping with a cult like figure to take things equally, unseriously, no matter how far they escalate.

Yeah. Just same exact energy brought when there's children in danger. And so, you know, he gets on the phone with all the mothers and he's like, well, this is another game in this game, the FBI is the game caller. And, you know, we just have to kind of play the game they want to play. Now, the moms are like, our kids are in custody in Tallahassee. We are all flying to Tallahassee. And he is like, no, no, you live in D.C. You should stay in D.C.

So he orders them not to go get their kids in Florida, which pisses a lot of them off. This is actually going to start a schism within the cult. Yeah, no shit, okay. So, but they're not so far gone that they like... They don't seem to be gone at all. That's the thing. Interesting, okay. Again, one of the hard things to tell about this

is like the degree to which people are like brainwashed or whatever. We'll talk with Erykah some, but like their attitude, the attitude generally seems to be this was like a fun game I was playing. Like this whole cult was like a fun thing to do with my friends until they fucked with my kids and then it stopped being fun. But they, I'm just going to tell the story. It's odd the way this paces out.

Okay. Yeah. Because it sounds like they're having fairly rational responses. Yes. Yes. Again, this is not whatever else we can say about this cult. It's not kind of exercising the same degree of like mental control over at least most of its members as a lot of other cults we cover. I don't know where you want to like lash that out morally, but it is it is interesting. Yeah. Speaking of interesting, Jamie.

Yeah. Yeah. Listen to this podcast ads. Oh, OK. Yeah. And we're back. We're back. I hope that they advertise that computer game. I've tried to buy it online. I tried to buy it online. This is horrible.

I tried to buy it online last year because I was just like, I need to remember how fucked up this, cause it was so scary. And I remember there were kids in class that were like, can we spend more time on the Zach game? It just feels more urgent than math. And I couldn't find it.

I got sent a different game, a different mid-auts computer game about child abduction. So there was more than one. Yeah, and I, you know, if you know me, you know, I love a good child. I don't know where to continue this, Jamie. All right. Well, just get back to the, I just, you know, I, you know, let's get back to the podcast, not talking about. Oh my God. Grand Rapids, Michigan. No, I already told you where I was. Yeah, I've been advised to not say more at

this time. I do. Sophie, do you think we could make money if instead of selling ads, we kind of like blackmail advertisers with not associating their brand with famous killing sprees using our audience as sort of like a weapon against them? Is that a good idea for making money? No, it's a good idea for ending this podcast and all of our people losing their health and insurance and homes. Well, you and I will hash that out behind the scenes, but I feel like we can make some

money doing it. No, we won't. I just vetoed it. I trust Sophie. I mean, we didn't get sued over the Blue Apron thing. I think that means we're bulletproof, Sophie. We agreed to never discuss that again. Let's test it.

Bulletproof coffee is still a product, I think. Why don't you see if you can associate them with the Green River Strangler? Let's just try it out, everybody. Let's just try it out. What? Sophie, I have gone mad with power. Yeah.

Bulletproof coffee is still around. It is still around. Well, that's embarrassing. Man, people really liked that shit for like so many years. And I was like, I had it once and there's too much butter in that coffee. Oh, yeah. I don't need that much butter in my coffee. I just saw the Folgers incest correctional for the first time a couple

of weeks ago. You hadn't seen it. Oh, that is the best part of waking up. Is your brother coming home from his creepy mission trip so you can give him a big old kiss on the lips? I love that he has just been in like Ethiopia or somewhere and he's like finally real coffee. I know You were where coffee comes from what is wrong with you? There's so many errors made in there. Oh, it is what a text. What a mistake that brother and sister make immediately after the ad cuts off. Anyway, it's not the first time.

Be serious. Speaking of mistakes, Petty makes a series of mistakes here because not only does he tell these moms, don't go get your kids, come to DC. He orders his followers and particularly his like goofy male followers who are all again, playing a game to respond to the court case against them in a way that's like, it's designed number one, not to be an efficient response. And number two, it's designed to kind of fuck with people's heads because he seems to find that funny. Like, I don't know exactly what his purpose here,

but he is not taking steps that you would take to try and get your kids released as quickly as possible. That's another question I have. Like, what is he getting out of this? I think he enjoys muddying the waters. He likes being a prankster. He comes out of, you know, we did our episodes in the Illuminati last year

and we talked about the Discordians, right? These guys, one of whom was really closely tied to the fucking Kennedy assassination, who's like reaction to being closely tied to a conspiracy was to just make more conspiracies to like fuck with people. I don't like this Heath Ledger Joker approach. This is not. I think it's fine potentially if it's like, yeah, I am being investigated by the government

for killing the president, maybe I'm going to like fuck around a little bit. You're the one on the line. But when you're making, when you're like potentially endangering the ability of parents to get back their children, I think you're doing something bad, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Then and that's a really hot take, but I think you were brave to say it. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you. So one of the lawyers who's going to be representing the finders later told John Cohen, the journalist that several members of the group were after he was like retained to represent them in this case, a bunch of finders members are sent over to like help him make the case to defend them. And this is how he describes them. They all had handlebar mustaches and dressed alike. I sent them to the FSU library to get

me books for the case to explain their philosophy. They came back with books on psychology, India, American Indians, Samoan tribes, Chinese philosophy. What are you talking about? Yeah, they're, yeah, they're, it's nonsense. I'm going to continue that quote from Cohen's article. Right before the hearing, Walborski, that's the lawyer, learned that the findersmen she had been working with had left town and were replaced by Steve Usden, who is another member of the cult. She also got the news that Petty had put a gag order on the other two men who had come there, and that she was going to be fired.

I said, okay, the first amendment issues haven't even been argued and they stand up and fired me. In court, Steve Oostin delivered a proclamation from petty. Our interests and the state's interests are the same, he said, so we don't need counsel. Some people practice law 20 or 30 years and never get fired on television while Borsky jokes. So wow, that is not taking the case. Serious firing your lawyer the day of then announcing

you're representing yourself, sending these weird mustache guys in costume to do research. None of that is like taking it very seriously. Yeah, it's treating it like you live in a in a B movie. Like that's absurd. Yeah. So one of the moms calls Petty. And this is how Paula Errico,

who's one of the other mothers describes this mother Livingston calling Petty. She begs him to tell her what to do. He said, fire your attorney. If you called him and begged him and he told you to do it, you can't say no. She was in agony. She really loves her son and she knew what would happen

the way I knew what would happen if I fired my attorney. It wouldn't be in the best interest of her children. So like these women are calling and crying, like begging him to not make them fire their attorneys and he's being like lay off your attorney. And this is what causes a split because some of these women fire their representation and like go with petty.

And some of them are like, no, fuck you, I'm going to do whatever I think will get my kid back fastest. Right. So this is like, yeah, it is again, just like interesting that they're that it's he doesn't have so tight a hold that it's not one of those stories where parents will actively not act in the best interest of their child because he says so. OK, yes. Some of them do and some because he says so. Okay. Yes, some of them do and some of them don't.

Okay. Anyway, that's obviously this chaos, the fact that lawyers are getting hired and fired and like they're putting in statements into court based on like Buddhist philosophy and shit. That is part of where some of the disinformation comes from. A lot of it also comes from, as we noted earlier, once this story blows up, hundreds of random American dipshits, conspiracy theories, people who again watch the same Oprah special as that customs agent guy and grew paranoid about it, they start clogging the police phone lines with their own theories about satanic pedophiles. One of the Scott Hunt, the customs officer says, I had 75 reporters waiting for me in the lobby.

We logged 450 telephone calls to me in two days. They were bringing in overtime people to help take messages. And yeah, these are like just, a lot of this is just pure nonsense. They've got all these different organizations, the National Center for Exploited Children, Children's Clearinghouse, the National Child Safety Council, the National Association of Missing Children,

all like canvassing on this case, trying to find, like, information about these kids and their parents, even though their parents have contacted the police, and it's generating this, like, huge amount of, like, false info. And also, because this is America, somebody calls in a bomb threat on the safe house where the police are holding the kids. They have been a cult member.

We don't really know. It's just chaos right now, right? Yeah. So everything beyond the initial busy body claims, who said that they were Satanists because she thought that would get a response. And the human services investigator who claimed that there was proof of sexual abuse,

everything else that's like claimed in the initial days after the case breaks about like abuse and ritual altars and cages and stuff, all of that info comes from one guy, Ramon Martinez, a junior custom service agent. So we have one, the initial claim of Satanism comes from a mom who had never met any of these guys and was just trying to get someone to do something because she was worried about the kids. The neighbor, right? This is the neighbor. The claim that

humans, that children were molested comes from a human services investigator who misheard or lied about what a doctor said. When a doctor was like, there's a couple of things we should check up on might be evidence of abuse, might not be. Everything else, the claims that like kids were locked in cages, that there's pictures of naked children, that there's ritual alters and children are being traded, all of that, the source comes from a police report

by Custom Service agent Ramon Martinez. Now, that sounds pretty serious because that's a federal agent making some really, really horrifying claims. However, other federal agents get to weigh in on this too. And here's how a later FBI report summarizes Ramon's claims. United States Custom Service Agent, Blank, they're talking about Martinez, claims to have observed a substantial amount of computer equipment and documents purportedly containing

instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes. The instructions allegedly included the impregnation of female members of the community, purchasing children, trading children, and kidnapping them. So that is like how they summarize his claims, but there's no evidence. They're like, we don't- Right. I'm like, where is this coming from? You do have to prove something. Yes, you have to show, and that's what the FBI says. They're like, well, we asked him what this is based on and he didn't have anything other than the police report he wrote.

Like he's claiming that he found documents about how to trade in traffic children and none of these are ever seen by anyone else. So when it comes to the conspiracy theories about the finders, every conspiratorial take you find takes this guy very seriously. Now the FBI comes to the conclusion that like, there's no evidence for any of this.

The physical evidence that he claims he saw that was recovered from the farm and from the house does not match the descriptions in his police report. I hate when the FBI is the most reasonable party present. That's like that's a sign that you're on a dark path. Yeah. And like what they do find there's some weird essays and unstuff on child rearing that they find which is part like there these like because again this is like an experimental cult like they're experimenting with like, all these different ways, like, is it better to raise children if you raise them communally, and you don't send them to

school. And like, that's kind of weird. It's not maybe not great to experiment on your kids, we could say. But it's not a child trafficking guide, right? So he is, he sees these weird essays on like new age family rearing. And he just kind of says, ah, these are, these are guides to sex trafficking children. And it's, you know, there's like pamphlets on how petty things pregnancy should be handled. And again, it's very new agey.

You know, what if we take these vitamins and do a natural birth instead of a birth this way? It's like the kind of life hack shit that you find all over the internet now. But it's not, it's not instructions for ritual sex abuse of children. Well If that's the bar then yeah terrific So the wingnut interpretation of Martinez's claims is well represented from an article I found on an incredibly credible website Gnostic warrior quote I found on an incredibly credible website, Gnostic Warrior. Quote, Martinez wrote that he was unable to review the evidence after multiple attempts

and said that he was eventually told by a confidential, unnamed informant within the DC police. The investigation into the Finders has become an internal CIA matter. No further will be available and no further action will be taken. So that's good. U.S. Custom customs officer Martinez wrote, on April 2nd, 1987, I arrived at MPD at approximately 9 a.m., Detective Bradley was not available.

I spoke to a third party who was willing to discuss the case with me on a strictly off the record basis. I was advised that all the passport data had been turned over to the State Department for their investigation. The State Department in turn advised the MPD that all travel and use of the passports by the holders of the passports was within the law and no action would be taken. This included travel to Moscow, North Korea, and North Vietnam from the late 1950s to the

mid-1970s. The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report has been classified secret and was not available for review. So... This is such a clusterfuck. It is, it is. And what he's talking about there, there's like passport,

as far as I can tell, that's Petty's passport. So one of the things, will we get back into like, oh, maybe there is some conspiracy here. From the 50s to the 70s, Petty is visiting the Soviet Union, North Korea and North Vietnam, which is like a difficult time to visit those countries as an American citizen. Right? Yeah. Yes.

And so the CIA becomes aware of him as a result of that. And it's unclear. Are they aware of him because he was traveling to those countries at their behest? Did they become aware of him because they saw an American traveling to those countries and wanted to know what the fuck was going on? Like why was he going there? And knowing Petty, it's entirely possible he was just curious. But this is some of the shit that gives the conspiracy legs, because you get these, like

he seems to have been traveling to some really weird fucked up places that got him on the government radar. And this guy, Ramon Martinez, this customs agent, who is himself a conspiracy theorist finds this out as he's starting to suspect that this is a big child molestation conspiracy. And it seems it like deepens his suspicions, right? Right. So yeah, that's cool.

Um, now. It's, I mean, it is, yeah, just like stunning how many like every time a new party is introduced into this investigation, it gets worse. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it's, you know, he all, Martinez also claims quote, I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI foreign counter

intelligence division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington field office of anything that transpired. Now that we can say the FBI says is untrue, right? The FBI claims that is not why we did not withdraw from the investigation. We did not direct MPD not to advise the Washington field office of anything that happened. None of that is true. Their reports state quite bluntly that nothing Martinez said was verified, right? That he was just kind of full of shit, like definitely full of shit. And in the FBI language, they say he was full of fucking shit.

And the FBI basically says, we don't see any evidence of illegal activity whatsoever. Maybe some questionable parenting tactics, but nothing beyond that. Washington DC police come to the same conclusion and as a spoiler, no member of the finders is ever convicted of a crime. However. Oh, I genuinely Robert, I let you tell me these stories. I don't I don't look it up in the interceding week. Yeah.

No one. No one. no, because there's no evidence that any of them broke any laws. Now, there's actually, there are some suggestions that like they may have done some arson in harassing a former member. I don't know what to say, what about the arson? We haven't talked about the arson today. No one knows anything about it.

Like the police just kind of, I don't think it ever got reported. It just got told to the police after the fact when they started interviewing former members who were like, yeah, and somebody's house burned down after they left. Maybe that was related. Maybe it was the fact that they made beds out of petroleum in the 80s. I don't know. Impossible to say.

Was this a cult attack or was this someone sleeping with a cigarette in their mouth? And yeah, and sometimes it is both. Yeah. a cult attack or was this someone sleeping with a cigarette in their mouth? And yeah, and sometimes it is both. Yeah, yeah, which is why I recommend always sleep with a lit cigarette in your mouth people. You know? It's true. It's good. That's the best kind of fire alarm because you'll feel it if the fire starts real fast.

Anyway. I miss a good old arson insurance scam that happened in my neighborhood when I was growing up and it was like a regionally specific one. They're like, oh, she had a Yankee candle on her bed. Oh. That's why. I know. You know when you have the Yankee candle on your bed and then the house burns down.

For sure. And then you have a new better house across town. I hate when that happens. My last name comes from an arson scam. For sure. And then you have a new better house across town. I hate when that happens. My last name comes from an arson scam. Do tell. Well, yeah, when my family first came here, my great-grandpa, like the first member of our family to come from Italy in like the 20s,

either was involved with the mob or was running an insurance scam that the mob wasn't cut in on. And so they rolled on him to the cops. It's unclear which, but he was like burning down barber shops, first his own and then other people's for the insurance money. And he got arrested and his wife was so ashamed

that she moved the family across the country and changed our last name, which is why people on the subreddit were like, his last name's Welsh, but he claims to be Italian. That's because my our last name, which is why people on the subreddit were like, his last name's Welsh, but he claims to be Italian. That's because my real last name is not my legal last name. That is incredible. Good stuff. Isn't that fun?

Good. Family. Yeah, we love to see it. You know what else we love to see, Jamie? What do we love to see? We love to see the products and services that support this podcast. Ain't that the truth. Ah, and we are back. So the good news, Jamie,

is that our friend, the Gnostic Warrior, was right about one thing, which is that the CIA were definitely involved with the finders. Wow. Yeah. That this is again where we can we take it. There's this. There's so many turns in this like they are for sure in play to some extent. It is just really unclear.

It was like, do we know? Yeah. It was like, do we know to what extent at which point like where we're. Yeah. Anything. I'm going to verify. I'm going to start with like what we can verify, right? What we know were actual connections to Petty and the finders with the CIA, right? The biggest and most obvious of them is that his wife works for the CIA, right? I think I called her an agent earlier.

She's not like a literal field agent as far as I can tell, but I also don't know what her job was. I just don't think they had female agents during the time when she was in the CIA, but she works in the CIA for a while. That is definitely the case. And when the FBI does their first investigation into the finders, while the court case is still active, they see Martinez claiming that like the CIA is involved

and like was trying to stop the investigation. So the FBI reaches out to the CIA, right? Cause they're both federal agencies, you know? That's the pretty normal thing to do. They're both federal agencies that can, you know, like, fuck with the world and kill people. And yeah, they're- Well, and they also, crucially, they hate each other.

The FBI and the CIA do not get along because they're always fighting for money, right? So the FBI is like, yeah, maybe the CIA's involved with this guy, his wife was in, we should reach out and see if the CIA's doing some fucked up shit. This is not all that long after they have a big fight over a bunch of MK Ultra stuff because it leads to like the CIA fucking with FBI investigation.

So the FBI like, hey, is this shit you? And the CIA does not say no. I'm going to read you first. First, I'm going to start with the first reference to the CIA and the FBI's records. This is from a section summarizing different law enforcement investigations into the cult. So like Maryland police, you know, DC police, FBI, they're like summarizing each of the investigations. Central Intelligence Agency investigation. Although the CIA claims their only involvement was that, and then several words are blanked out, was a former employee of the agency. So it's clearly their only involvement was that Marion's wife was a former employee. They stated that they were monitoring the

investigation from the beginning, and then another sentence is blanked out. So we don't get much there. But the FBI files also disclose a DC metropolitan police report, which reads this way. At approximately 1530 hours, Detective blank spoke with Special Agent blank, referencing any contact the members of the finders may have had with the agency, Special Agent blank guarded but frank in his responses. He confirmed that blank Isabel now deceased was an employee of the agency from 1950 until that's Marion's wife. When Asifar investigation was treading

on anybody's toes out there, he replied, sort of. He acknowledged that they have someone working on the case since it first broke in the news media. He also stated that the agency is aware that during the period of 1969 to 1971, blank travel to Moscow, North Korea and North Vietnam. So what comes out here is this detective says, are we treading on your toes by investigating this cult? And the CIA says, sort of. And then they clarify that they have assigned an agent to the case when the story broke. And that's backed up by the fact that the FBI

summarizes a CIA investigation into the finders, right? So all the CIA is saying there is that like, you're kind of treading on our toes because we know that we're being accused of being involved and we're looking into it. However, you can also see how the CIA responding sort of to a detective asking, is this your guys would lead to a lot of conspiracies? That doesn't look good. And it's also just like, uh, the CAA, I honestly kind of appreciate their candor there because they're just like, yeah, we've done so many fucked up things in the interceding years. We're gonna have to check the books. We're actually like, it's probably, but like, we just want to be sure. Yeah, it's like it's like when I wake up after a blackout

and someone's like, did you piss on the side of my car? And I'm like, I don't know, let me let me consult my notes on last night. That's entirely possible. Based on historical record, it's likely I did, but I want to do my due diligence. Confirm Norton dot. Yeah. Take a piss strip to it, see if it's real. And this also, it's interesting to me, too, that this detective says that the CIA told him like, this guy, Mary and Petty, traveled out of the country to a bunch of communist states

and from 69 to 71. It's interesting that they would just say that during a phone call. So that's weird. You get why all of that causes people to be like something more what the fuck was going on here. I'm kind of like what the fuck was going on here. Right. That's suspicious as hell. It's deeply weird. Now that said, everyone who knew petty during this time was like, yeah, he would he loved pretending to be a spy and making other people pretend to be a spy. He may have been traveling like North Korea just to pretend to be a spy. He may have been larking.

Anything is possible. Almost anything is possible. Now the second half of that police report makes it clear that the detective in the case also did not take the CIA's answers at face value, which is very rational when you're dealing with the CIA. As a practical matter, what is not being said is as important as what Special Agent blank has said. Special Agent blank acknowledged that we are treading on their toes and that they have had someone working on the case since February 5th

when it broke. They apparently have a vested interest in blank and or the group. I think that's petty, right? And or the group. They have not contacted any of the investigating agencies while they have been working on the case. They are also aware that blank traveled to prohibited countries during a period of hostilities that could only have been arranged by them. Finally, he stated that and then there's like two sentences blanked out. This could explain a lot about this group's funding, which we have been unable to document at this point. So does that mean the CIA was sending these guys money? Because that's what it seems like from the police report, but anything could be in those sentences. It really, it's a, it's a, it's a crimes mad lib by some of the least reliable narrators on the planet.

No. And again, it's really unclear. Did the CIA say something or did he just interpret this as them saying something that could be determined as them funding it? Because like, we know that a bunch of people who had money joined the finders and gave them their money, and we know they operated several profitable businesses. So you don't have to have,

what they're doing does not require so much money that you have to have government backing to explain it. But this report does kind of make it seem like, well, yeah, maybe the fucking CIA put some money in there. And it also, like, he's saying you can only travel, this detective says, he, Pettie could only have traveled to these prohibited countries during wartime if the CIA had arranged it. That's not entirely true. There's other cases of Americans traveling to these countries during the Cold War, but maybe the CIA told them that.

So I don't know. Well, and it's like his proximity to the CIA really, like the CIA and the LARPing are in constant conflict with each other. Yeah. I don't know what to think. There is zero evidence that this is a satanic conspiracy. No. However, definitely.

That's the one thing I can say for sure. There's a decent amount of evidence that something shady with the CIA and the finder's coat was going on, right? It's just really unclear the extent that that took. And we have more to say on the matter. Okay, cause I'm also curious, because I know that you characterized his relationship

with his wife as like it grew as strange pretty quickly once the funger stuff started taking off but it's like do we even know that that's true? You know? And here's the thing, this is one of the weird things. We sound like we're spreading conspiracies. Okay. It's entirely possible he was connected to the CIA and that it had nothing to do with his wife's connection to the CIA. What? Yeah, yeah, that's what we're getting into. Because it's just peculiar, right? So the author, Mark Reibling, who wrote a book about the conflict between the FBI and the CIA,

described in that book, basically, these two agencies have a series of escalating conflicts. A lot of it starts with MK Ultra. So a lot of this stuff actually reaches kind of like a new height of conspiracism a few years after the case drops. And we're going to have to like jump ahead here before we go back to 1988 to talk about how this shakes out. Cause this is about stuff that's happening in the 80s, but doesn't get

found out until later. Just before Christmas 1993, a report comes out that the CIA had had the FBI cover up to some extent its connections with the finders. And that connection was that the CIA had hired the finders for computer training. And for a more detailed summary of what happened, I'm going to read an excerpt from an AP News article here. The CIA sent some employees to a company called Future Enterprises Inc. for computer training in the 1980s, but the spokesman said the CIA did not know about

any connections between the company and the finders and added that the company was in no sense a CIA front or ever owned or operated by anyone for the CIA. Joseph Maranich, Vice President of Future Enterprises, says the company has trained CIA employees in computer use and continues to do so, but that it has never been a front for anyone. Maranich said one Finder's member, former IRS employee Robert Garder Terrell, worked for the company before he was let go in February 1987.

So what's going on there is you've got this company that trains people in computer use. And right before the finders all get busted and this case starts, the CIA hires them to train CIA agents. And the member of the finders that is training those CIA agents is former IRS employee Robert Terrell, who's the guy who writes the biography of Marion Petty. That's the major source for the first part of this episode. So that's fun. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of stuff like this. Now, we know the finders had a lot of coders and computer technicians. A lot of smart nerds are in this cult. And also, in this period of time, the CIA probably doesn't have a ton of people inside the agency who are great with computers. It's not weird that they would be hiring out for that

because computers are very new. That said, it's also totally within the dealings of the CIA to like operate companies and shit and use that as a way to like send money places without having it be open, you know? That's like a thing they do over and over again. That said, it would be weird to do that and then hire that company to train CIA agents, which would seem to like increase the level of suspicion towards the CIA. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know why you'd do

that. I also don't know why you'd do that. I'm also stuck on computer training. Yeah. I think it's like Excel basically. Like you can't do a lot with computers back then. Like how I taught the old employees at the comptroller's office how to, like, surely I just don't, I'm stuck. This is giving me conspiracy brain because you're just like,

surely there is someone who could train you on computers comparably to the finders that aren't the finders like I know But also what this makes me think so Terrell is an IR a former IRS agent and a big thing the CIA might want Computer training in is like forensics, right? If you're investigating say you this is the Cold War, right? You're investigating a company that you think is a front for the Russian government or has received funds from Russian intelligence, right? Sure. Well, that would be something you might need someone who is a forensic analyst of like computer records to look through. And Terrell, as a former IRS agent who knows computers,

might be able to train them in doing that, right? Like, I can see that being just, I can see him just being involved because he has this knowledge based on his background. And the CIA is interested in getting their employees trained on it. It's also possible, like a number of things are possible here, right? It could be a coincidence like that he was working for this company and the CIA contracted with them because there just wasn't a lot of computer training in the DC area at that point in time. It's also possible that one way or another, Petty found out that the CIA was using this company to train their agents, and that Petty sent Terrell to work at future enterprises as part of a game, because he wanted to know what kind of shit the CIA was being trained in.

That is also in character with the group. It's also possible that the CIA was aware of this and sent agents to get this training because they knew a finder's member was in the company, right? Like all three of those things could be the case. It's really, and all three of those things are in character

with the players involved in this. Right. And all of the characters in this, in this sort of saga, you historically cannot trust. No, everyone is a liar for what's happening. Yeah, this is beyond being a liar. Petty likes spreading disinformation to make people believe untrue things about

his cult because he's a prankster and also likes sowing doubt. And the CIA does the same thing because they're the CIA. So we really very hard to know what has actually happened here. Yeah, the FBI CIA rivalry. I mean, it makes total sense that it's also just like, you know, like Red Sox Yankees for people that want to fucking destroy the world. It's so depressing. Yeah, it is. And obviously the CIA are the Yankees.

I think we can all agree on that. I don't know. I guess I don't want to choose. I don't want to choose. I resent having to choose. Yeah. OK. On what grounds is the CIA the Yankees? Classic East coaster. OK. On what grounds?

I feel like the Yankees also overthrew the government of Guatemala. Oh, OK. Well, when you put it like that, no further questions. So the other possibility as to what's happening here is that everything that was going on, because the thing that didn't make sense to me is, all right, if the CIA is running this computer trading company, why would they have it train their CIA agents and establish a paper trail between them? That seems dumb. But what if the whole training thing is a cover for the agency to communicate with or otherwise use the finders? Right. What if this was a way of them by establishing this relationship of getting money,

funneling money to the finders for whatever they had them doing? Right. Or to like, yeah, I don't know. It's possible. A theory I find particularly compelling is posited to John Cohen by Daniel Brandt. And Daniel Brandt is an independent left wing intelligence analyst who marketed in this period of time, a database of intelligence citations called spy base, starting in the 1980s. So this

is like, if you're a progressive, like, I'm trying to keep track of all of the different like weird spy shit 1980s. So this is like, if you're a progressive, like I'm trying to keep track of all of the different, like weird spy shit going on. So you can be aware of the different threats to like your political organization or whatever, right? Gotcha, gotcha. Brant met members of the Finders starting in 1984 and claimed, quote,

they approached me because they saw I was doing this database. I had posted a note about it in an extremely obscure journal called Reset. So two Finders members reach out to Brandt when they see this and they're like, hey, we work with something called the Information Bank and we'll give you some software we've developed in exchange for some of your files. And so he has a little relationship with these guys, he gives them some software, they give

them some files. He says they're well informed on counterspying. They seem to know a lot about intelligence, but he also claims that they're like, he kind of breaks ties with them because they keep pushing him for information. And he talks to some friends at the same time that members of the finders reach out to,

and they have even more unsettling experiences. He eventually files a three page memo that he like publishes to different progressive groups around DC to warn them about the finders. And I'm going to read a summary of this from John Cohen's article. Quote, dated November 10th, 1986, the memo is headed a summary of what is known about some very strange people who use computers and seek out progressives so that they can

ask a lot of suspicious questions. In addition to Information Bank, Brandt wrote, members said that they were from Global Press Review, Hong Kong Business Today, and the Seekers. Members also approached Lou Wolf, co-editor of Covert Action Information Bulletin, and he helped Brant check them out. There are several characteristics that lend themselves to the interpretation

that this is an information gathering front for a cult of some sort, Brant wrote in his summary, noting that members may not be told the purpose behind their missions. The guys of computer consulting is an ideal method of spying on the left, he concluded. It would take about 20 seconds to copy an entire mailing list from a hard drive to a floppy. And that's really possible. And that's really possible because as we'll say the CIA did exactly that with different groups

Like this is not coming out of nowhere. These guys are not conspiracy theorists. They are saying we know the CIA was doing this with Other groups. They may have been doing it with the finders, right? So yeah, given this info I can see two equally plausible possibilities one this cult Which recruited from left wing and New Age type people, right? this cult, which recruited from left wing and new age type people, right? They may have been spying on progressive groups and trying to get access to mailing lists for progressive groups just to recruit people, right? Not because of a CIA thing, but because that was the kind of person they thought would join their crew and their cults are always recruiting, right? That's one possibility. They also may have been contacted or even paid by the CIA to spy on progressive groups, right?

And it may have been a bit of both, right? We can get members this way and the CIA will pay us, we can get information from the CIA if we do this, right? There is some suggestion that early in the cult's history, because they're doing all these spying games, petty sending them around the world to infiltrate companies and get information. There's information that suggests Petty would reach out to the feds when he would get info to try to trade info with them, right? To be like, hey, I found this out. If you find out anything else, you let me know, right?

Which would both be a connection with the CIA and also mean the CIA was like well He was just kind of hassling us like we weren't contract. He just kept reaching out with shit. I mean that would that would Help resolve the issue we've been having the whole time which is like him, you know sort of characterizing this this Cult atmosphere as like a merry prankster Joker thing. It's like, if there, I understand why this has lent itself to so many conspiracies. Cause it's like, you're just like, why? Like, and that is a thread as to why that, you know,

there's, yeah, cause I'm like so continually baffled by the ostensible lack of clear purpose. But if you're telling people they're lARPing and they are actually accomplishing something for you, that's not nothing. I also just hearing a couple of sentences you were saying, I miss when talking about computers with like, there was this horny energy about it. Hard drive to a floppy, you're not getting, you know, you're not getting words like that anymore in the computer world. It's illegal to use words like that

in the computer world, Jamie. The woke left will cancel you. It's considered a thought crime. I think it's really telling that I am, I've allegedly done a lot of shit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but what I'm gonna get taken down for is saying hard drive to a floppy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what you're going to get canceled for by the AI that is spreading the lies against you. It's true. So the other thing I want to add before we end for the day is that like the possibility that there's a connection to the CIA, which is that Petty kept trying to feed them information. And maybe they, at some point, were like,

hey, why don't you do this for us or that for us? Like, let's see if we can use this guy. He come up with something interesting. That's really consistent with how he liked to behave. And we know this because of what he did to John Cohen, that journalist who interviewed him in 1996. I want to quote a bit from that article because where this, this is one of the better sources we have on petty and his cult, particularly like in the late stage of the cult.

And what happens is Cohen travels to Colpepper, Virginia, you know, well after the case blows up and like goes away and he interviews. And during their conversation, this happens. And this is Petty talking. Any way that we can throw you any leads, he asks, be thinking about what leads you could throw us if you come across anything we'd be interested in. I can't think of a single lead that Petty might be interested in. He and Burns, who's his other cult member, both lean forward awaiting my response. No one says a word, and the silence is deafening.

This journalist comes to interview them and they're like, hey, we could really use a journalist. What if we have a partnership? You throw us any leads you get. We'll throw you leads for stories. We get all sorts of leads for stories. We're always looking into stuff. I could see Petty's relationship with the CIA starting at least with that, with him reaching out to the CIA and being like, I got this lead on this company in Japan, or I got this lead on

this communist organization, this progressive organization in the US. Here's some info. If you get any leads, here's what I'm interested in. You throw them my way, right? And I could see the CIA being like, well, let's humor this guy and give him some bullshit because we're the CIA and, you know, there's no cost in us trying to see what we might get. I could see that being the texture of the relationship they have too. Anyway, well, yes, this is more but not today. Yeah, I mean, this does feel like a perfectly infuriating case study at just like baffling questions and systemic failure at virtually every level to the point where you cannot trust what anyone says. And so at that point, you might as well just make shit up. And that's conspiracy culture. Wow. I also realize one more thing.

Can I tell you one more thing? Sure. I realized that the Red Sox are the FBI because they also killed MLK. Oh, wait, the Red Sox did? The Red Sox. Wow. Wow. Jamie Loftus, you know, Google the Red Sox assassination. No, don't Google anything anymore. See what comes up, see what comes up. Don't Google anything anymore. There's a lot to these episodes. We have more CIA talk when we come back. We have the resolution of the cult case

and we have what happens after the child trafficking case goes away. So all of that and more, Jamie, in part four, the conclusion of the epic saga of the finders. But first off, doing this to me. Yeah, let's conclude the epic saga of Jamie Loftus on this podcast by giving your pluggables. Oh, I'm going to just plug away. You should follow me on Twitter and Instagram still against all odds. I am still there. You can, what else could you do? You buy my book Raw Dog, which is about hot

dogs. You can listen to a show I'm producing called We The Unhoused community. And you can listen to my new show called, I don't know, the title is in transit at this time. It's currently called 15 Minutes, and it's gonna be a new weekly show on CoolZone media, ever heard of it, about every week we look at one of the internet's main characters. Yeah.

Past, present and future. I'm gonna try to establish, see if I can establish my own main character, just install someone. Yeah, and you know who else could be a main character? Marion Petty. He kind of was early main character on the early internet. It's true, on the early internet. It's true.

On the floppy, it's... The further you go back in internet history, you're like, wow, I feel like we characterize it as where we ever so young, but it's like, no, we're always pretty bad. We just didn't realize it. Yeah. Oh, well.

Those are my plugs. Didn't realize it. Yeah. Oh well so Those are my plugs You know go to hell. I love you Behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media for more from cool zone media Is that our website cool zone media comm or check us out on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nicole Perkins, and in my new podcast, The Godmother, I'm inviting you to 1930s New York. I want to tell you the extraordinary story of Eunice

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